London International Animation Festival

On Tuesday evening I attended the ‘Animated Documentaries’ screening at the London International Animation festival. It was an invaluable experience; it was really interesting to see how each artist portrayed their unique ideas through documentary animation. Each film was totally unique, conveying a different theme.

I feel as if the use of animation as a media for documentation is very successful. Using Animation rather than live action, enabled the artists to convey the theme of the film through abstract shapes and patterns. Initially I thought that watching an animation whilst listening to an evocative sound recording may be distracting, however I found it made the sound recording even more powerful.

The screening was followed by a talk with Luca Schenato, Sinem Vardali, Jocie Juritz, Harriet Croucher and Anna Ginsburg. It was very interesting to hear about the intentions behind their films and the challenges they had to overcome whilst making them. For example, in Harriet Croucher’s film ‘Blue Light’, she had the problem of protecting the identity of her clients. Her film was about emergency personnel talking about the realities of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and its impact on their lives as well as their families. So, it was important her clients remained secret, or they could have been discharged.

It was inspiring to see how many issues were covered in the documentaries. I believe that the documentaries covering mental health were very touching and in my opinion the most successful. I feel as if you could really connect to the narrator on an emotional level.